2050 looks like…

Born in December 1949, one of my earliest memories is of a working, coal fired, steam locomotive. I wish the next generation well but have no illusions that it will be easy. I've seen too many examples (even in the mirror) of those who deny reality which reminds me of the old joke:

A dentist and a doctor went lion hunting in Africa. But the local food led to a gastric problem and they had to duck behind a bush for relief. Just at that moment, a lion jumped out and started chasing them.

The dentist said to the doctor, "I don't know why we are trying to run so hard. Man can not out run a lion."

The doctor replied, "I'm only trying to out run you."​

Bob Wilson

 

2050 looks like…
........The inside of a casket, probably.

Divers always swim with a buddy and they always have a dive knife strapped to their leg.....

 

I always figured after being field-dressed for parts, the rest would go to 'a tank' in a medical school or added to the global CO{2} load. No need to waste a hole. However, I've occasionally thought by internment in high-mineral content, water grave, perhaps a gypsum grave, with an inscription,"Petrified Bob." Do one better than the mummies.

Bob Wilson

 

I actually wanted to be buried at sea...perhaps impulsed out of a torpedo tube....however (comma!!!) this was swiftly countermanded by CINCHOUSE. I've always believed that it was ridiculous to put preservatives into a corpse, which is placed into a box.....and sometimes depending on the cemetery, into a concrete vault.
I always thought it would be nice to provide some shrimp or worm a nice meal, and I've always credited the Muslims for being very sensible about dealing with the whole death thing, with the exception of their prohibiting deliberate cremation.

After any pieces parts are salvaged by the medical community, I now intend to be interred at the nearest open national cemetery under a cross shaped white rock....or in my local church cemetery.
Her pick, since I won't be there.

 

The problem with the Malthusians and neo Malthusians and other preachers of famine is not crying wolf, but chiken little. It isn't as if this time there will be a famine and no one will listen, it is that some go around listening or preaching it, either getting eaten by the fox, or being the fox and hurting those that are foolish enough to listen.

10 Terrible Famines In History - Listverse
When you look down the list of famines in the 19 th and 20th century, there certainly is weather, but there is a darker human component. Many died in the irish potato famine because england didn't want to help feed them and even blocked other countries from giving food aid. Stalin burned crops to have peasants fall in line, the Japanese blocked bengal from importing food from burna, starving them out, The chinese simply put crazy farming methods out to increase food and caused the most deaths in the great leap forward, and the north korean famine was caused by awful agricultural policies and an unwillingness to import food.

neo malthusians often advocate misanthropic government policies that seem to bring about fatalities. The agricultural revolution happened with neo malthusians saying we should let india starve

Look at how much food there is in the world today. Obesity is more of a problem in much of the world than starvation, and 1/3 of food is wasted, plenty to feed all of the hungry. There are logistic issues that we need to work on, but starvation today is mainly political. That includes malnutrition in wealthy countries like the US.

The biggest risk of famine is politics not weather events. If we plan correctly, can't say if that thread is like past British ones which were awful, all the people whose governments support them should have food. Mono crops are a political risk, as are food for fuel.

 

UN had 805 million "hungry" in 2012, about half of those suffer from malnutrion that is serious, but yes it should be 0. Some especially in sudan has been reduced since that report, but it still is a problem. There is plenty of food to feed these people, its a distribution and government politics problem. 1.8 billion are over weight, of which 600 million are obese. If we distributed the extra food from those 1.8 billion to the 800 million, well you can see there is plenty of food. About 1/3 of food is wasted, that is grown and gets thrown away or sits around until it is spoiled. Food security was part of a conference I attended, and I was shocked at how much we waste.

+1

Nice

When a bad government causes famine or makes moves to sarve people, most recently sudan, north korea, and somalia, there is not much we can do.

Our experience in the last 300 years is that both population growth and food production are extremely non-linear. Sure linear is a good place to start, but why not look historically.
Population in 1900 was about 1.7 B, in 2000 6B, today 7.36 (okay check the link, it updates for the today you read this.
World Population Clock: 7.3 Billion People (2015) - Worldometers

Don't think its a goal, but yes its a good guess for 10 billion. Not sure why we would need 110% of the food, unless we want weight to increase, you know from 1.8 B overweight today to maybe 7 billion overweight in 2050. That seems like a poor goal.

Well yes, we should have a richer population, people will grow what the governent or people tell them will sell. Hopefully the US government will stop with the massive corn push. That is a risk.

Yes, I would say historically yields have increased much faster, as they are exponential, not linear. The mechanism here has always been technologies, and with the internet and faster computers we can through selection (either artificial or genetic modification) get more drought or mold or pest resistance. Its not all good news. With the extra yields the world will demand more meat, which will push for more agricultural land. Yield per acre of chicken or pork or beef is much lower than beans or rice.

I see a steady trend -> irrigation, fertilizer, manufactured fertilizer (haber process solved the manure shortage problem, can be made by wind water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide), along with better artificial selection and gmo. Better weather prediction should improve yields and some tech I don't know yet. gmo is in its infancy.

I would not assume selection is played out. We did not know before each agricultural revolution that it was going to happen.

I apologize if the Malthusian term offended you. I do belive that we need to guard against some politics based on poor science. Many still belive that food will only increase linearly by more acres in spite of this idea being so wrong over the last couple of centuries. perhaps climate change will help or will hurt this technological increase in yield, at this point we don't know. I just would beware of thoughts that we can't feed 10 billion people when there is so much food today. The problem is in distribution and governments.

 

I appreciate the effort but decided to use:

• annual period - this lets us see the effect for forcing functions like solar cycle, El Nino/La Nina and volcanic events. These 'noise' events are interesting yet widely spaced so depending upon where decade boundaries fall, different plots can be generated from the same data.
• Gaussian weight average - as pointed out before, it takes out most of the 'noise.'
• Berkley land - this record traces back to the beginning of the modern instrument era, ~1850, and have been subject to improvements over time. An open effort, it has credibility.
  • Investigating use of sea level to provide ocean mean surface temperature.

I am bothered that short-term forcing functions are not well qualified. El Nino/La Nina, the surface patterns are easily detectable BUT "massive" "greatest" "minor", these are not quantitative values. The same exists for volcanoes, we can easily see them but the particulates and gasses are seldom quantified for each event until well after. Then there are the sun-spot activity papers/presentations that was badly "announced."

We are approaching the same problem with different goals. I'm interested in near-time metrics and projects to 2050 sort of fall out. But I'm also interested in every year in between including looking at the poorly predicted, forcing functions.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob,. the independant functions are solar radiation and gasses, which includes human fossil burn and volcano.

ENSO, AMO, ice melt, etc are things to be modeled from those imputs. and are not forcing functions but part of natural variation. If you go down to a 1 year time period you need to model these well. It is difficult even after the fact to remove ENSO from the temperature record, which is why a smoothing function is often used. For me an 11 year moving average is simple computationally and does correspond to half a solar cycle, so there is a good chance that physically it is bluing most of the natural variation. Ten years is almost as good. If you pick single years you better be able to explain why you get so big of an error, and why the low recent warming is going on, things that are not necessary with a moving average, or a good filter that is chosen to remove variation.

Tochatihu, for me NCDC not GISS is the best one to model against, but GISS is very close and good too. HADCRUT is a little problematic as the methodology is not open, which means it may vary based on this unknown choice that models have no way of taking into account.

 

I agree that calling El Nino/La Nina a forcing function is poor practice. Just I've seen at least one paper treat them as forcing and not a following or dependent function. For example, the dip in sea level when the Icelandic volcano occurred was by tagged by one author as being a result of a La Nina ... a La Nina others have called 'minor'. I am really not happy with the El Nino/La Nina 'metrics' or rather their absence.

The real problem is the mechanics of El Nino/La Nina (and other ocean effects) versus climate forcing functions are still poorly understood. If you need more examples, 'mojo' once posted a link to some nonsense about AMO about to freeze out Europe.

I'm also unhappy with the current data on volcanic activities. We need real-time, gas and ash data but I don't think anyone is really looking at collecting and reporting this data. As I have time, I'll survey the "A-train" satellites to see if they have any better gas concentration metrics. In particular, I'm interested in sulfur compounds. But dust may be a 'bridge too far' as the magna are not uniform and all dust particles are not the same.

Later,
Bob Wilson

 

ENSO is modeled poorly in the global climate models. Some theories have it related to solar radiation, and thus the solar cycle. I have hope that we will be able to predict the solar cycle (independent variable) and then get ENSO modeled if that is what is lacking. Volcanos while part of natural variation are not well predicted, so we can consider this also a independent variable. I doubt ENSO is dependant on that, but then again it is not well modeled. I think the trick is for the climate models to be able to take the imput of volcanic, solar cycle, and major ghg sulfur dioxide, and particulates. If when actual are used I hope that the models reflect what happened. Once that happens we can worry more about the predictions being accurate.

There is a theory that the artic ice melt will change atlantic ocean circulation and AMO. If this happens the UK will likely get colder. This may cause a pause in warming.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101103141541.htm

I believe NASA and NOAA are trying to get instruments to collect this data. NASA has had trouble lately getting its observation satellites up, but have some planes to aid study.
News | NASA Sends Unmanned Aircraft to Study Volcanic Plume

 

I have seen a distinct cold spot in the North Atlantic where normally I'd expect to see the Gulf Stream. BUT I have been looking at the Unisys SST anomalies and not the raw temperature data:

• anomaly: Unisys Weather - Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly - Current
• current: Unisys Weather - Sea Surface Temperature - Current

Of course, how could the English tell if the weather is cold and wet from being cold and wet.

Bob Wilson

 

Far off topic, but if theories of reversing atlantic circulation happen (maybe in 100 years) UK will have a shorter growing season and will need to change crops. In the French wine country summers will be wetter, and wine will taste different. These are regional not global things. Other places will have longer growing seasons and be better for wine grapes. As I see it all the climate change scenarios for England are bad, but some may be good for the US and Canada. Winners and losers.